The Back Channel

by William J Burns

  Baker set out on the first of his post–Gulf War trips just after President Bush’s triumphal address to a joint session of Congress on the evening of March 6. His broad aim was to outline his concept for reviving Arab-Israeli negotiations, and his tactical goal was to harvest the debt owed the United States for the defeat of Saddam, especially by the Gulf Arabs, and show Shamir that the Arabs were prepared to engage him directly.

  The scene when we landed in Kuwait City on the early afternoon of March 9 was unforgettable. The airport’s main terminal was pockmarked by shellfire, with broken glass and rubble everywhere. When we helicoptered north to see some of the damage done by the Iraqis in their scorched-earth withdrawal, the sky turned black. Saddam’s forces had set fire to five hundred Kuwaiti oil wells, and billowing dark smoke was everywhere, the air thick with soot and flames shooting upward across the apocalyptic horizon.

  The rest of the trip was modestly encouraging. In Cairo, Hosni Mubarak was exuberant about the way in which Bush and the coalition had humbled Saddam. “Jim,” he boomed across his spacious office, “I don’t think Shamir will change, but this is your best chance.” Shamir himself was cautious, especially about the proposed opening conference, and insistent that Palestinian representatives had to be part of a joint delegation with Jordan and unconnected to the PLO. The secretary had a useful introductory discussion with a group of ten Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza, led by Feisal Husseini, a well-respected member of a prominent East Jerusalem family, and Hanan Ashrawi, a Ramallah academic whose emergence as a secular, nonviolent female leader fluent in the language of the street as well as diplomacy made a strong impression. Baker stopped in Damascus to see Assad again, and found him wary but ready to engage. In Moscow, the Soviets told the secretary that they were quite interested in co-sponsorship of the process; Baker made clear in return that Moscow would need to first restore full diplomatic relations with Israel.

  That first trip demonstrated Baker’s skill in managing both regional personalities and his own personnel. On the latter, he relied on a tight Middle East team who accompanied him throughout his 1991 shuttle diplomacy. Dennis Ross was Baker’s senior advisor, and then there were three more junior aides: Dan Kurtzer, Aaron Miller, and me. We churned out massive quantities of talking points for Baker’s meetings, strategy papers for his shuttles, public statements, and cables. It was Margaret Tutwiler who coined the term “food processors” to describe our endless churn. It probably didn’t do much for our street credibility as hard-nosed diplomats when the phrase made it into a Washington Post profile of our work later that fall, but it certainly captured the grinding rhythm of serious diplomatic enterprises.

  Baker understood from the outset that building personal trust with a complicated and often intractable set of regional players would be critical. The three most crucial to the effort were Shamir, Assad, and the Palestinians. In constructing a process largely to the Israeli prime minister’s specifications, Baker worked assiduously to win the confidence of the ever-suspicious Shamir. They were an unlikely pair—the smooth, artful Texas patrician whittling away methodically at the reservations of the hardline Israeli political veteran, whose soft-spoken demeanor belied a steely resistance to compromise and an abiding mistrust of anyone who might try to lure him down that path. But they developed a genuine, if sometimes grudging, mutual respect, without which the Madrid Peace Conference would never have happened.

  Delivering Hafez al-Assad and Palestinian representatives to the negotiating table, on terms that Shamir could stomach, was the key to cutting off his diplomatic routes of escape. Baker spent dozens of hours with Assad in 1991. Their meetings were tests of stamina, will, and ingenuity, with Assad filibustering and probing constantly for weaknesses in Baker’s arguments or assurances. Alternately tough and empathetic, sometimes raising his voice in exasperation or threatening to abandon his peacemaking effort, Baker clearly established himself in Assad’s eyes as a formidable and worthy negotiating partner. Assad regularly stretched Baker’s patience to the breaking point, but came to trust the secretary’s commitment and pragmatic disposition.

  The same proved true of the Palestinians with whom Baker wrestled over those eight roller-coaster months. Husseini, Ashrawi, and their colleagues were caught in a vise. Their options tightly limited by Israeli occupation, they were further constrained by their political subordination to the PLO leadership in Tunisia, popular suspicions in the West Bank and Gaza, and the difficult parameters that Baker insisted upon for Palestinian representation in negotiations. They had no easy choices, but they came to trust Baker enough to take the chance that once engaged in direct negotiations, even if nominally part of a joint delegation with the Jordanians, they could translate their weak hand into tangible progress toward self-determination.

  With Shamir, Assad, and the Palestinians, Baker was ecumenical in his candor. In one of the many pungent Texas expressions that he introduced into the Middle East political lexicon, he threatened to “leave a dead cat on the doorstep” of any party that balked at the diplomatic possibility he was offering. As the months wore on, their worries about being blamed by Baker for failure grew, even as their suspicions about one another remained intense. None of them were eager to call his bluff.

  Baker made two more trips to the region in April. The first included a stop along the Turkish border with Iraq, where hundreds of thousands of Kurdish refugees were camped, fleeing Saddam’s postwar repression and sorely in need of assistance and protection. That sea of humanity made a powerful impression on all of us, and Baker reinforced the inclination of President Bush to do more to help. The scenes from his April talks with the Arabs and Israelis on that trip were less spectacular, but similarly worrisome. Shamir still took issue with any form of United Nations participation in the peace conference that Baker was proposing, and questioned whether UN Security Council Resolution 242, which had shortly after the 1967 war set out the basic formula of land for peace, should be the basis for negotiations. Assad, on the other hand, insisted on a clear UN role to provide “international legitimacy,” a continuing role for the conference as the two tracks of negotiations unfolded, and a provision that the U.S. and Soviet co-sponsors would be expected to “guarantee” outcomes.

  The Palestinians still maintained that they should be able to determine their own representatives, balking at Baker’s position that they had to be part of a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation, and not include members either formally affiliated with the PLO or resident in East Jerusalem. Although King Hussein, anxious to get back in American good graces, pledged full Jordanian support for the process, and Mubarak remained a stalwart backer, the Saudis had begun to slide back into their familiar risk-averse, pre–Desert Storm position, and dragged their feet on whether they’d participate in the conference and the follow-on multilateral track negotiations. Baker left his last set of discussions, which included both the nine-hour “bladder diplomacy” episode with Assad and an equally frustrating stop in Jerusalem, increasingly concerned about whether the process would ever get off the ground.

  In several more trips in late spring and summer, Baker steadily chipped away at the remaining resistance. There were predictable fits and starts in trying to persuade the Gulf Arabs to deliver on their commitments. When the Saudis pulled up short of making an expected announcement of their participation at one point, Baker pounded his hand on his desk and said in exasperation, “Those guys could fuck up a two-car funeral.”

  Slowly but surely, the parties were coming around. In May, the Saudis agreed to attend the conference, an historic first. We found a recipe for the conference structure that Shamir and Assad both reluctantly accepted, with a UN observer role. Assad was impressed by Baker’s offer of a U.S. security guarantee of whatever Israeli-Syrian border was negotiated, complete with the possibility of American forces on the Golan Heights. Assad indicated formally in a letter to Bush in July that he would participate. Finally, the Pales
tinians agreed to attend under the terms that Baker had outlined.

  Baker returned to the region for an eighth time in October. He had scheduled a meeting in Jerusalem on the afternoon of October 18 with the new Soviet foreign minister, Boris Pankin, after which we planned to issue the invitations to the peace conference. The parties were still nervous and important details still unresolved. The Palestinians, in particular, were having difficulty producing the list of fourteen names for their part of the joint delegation that they had promised, so that Baker could make sure they met the agreed criteria.

  Baker met with Husseini, Ashrawi, and several of their colleagues at the very un–Middle Eastern hour of 7:45 that morning at the old U.S. Consulate General facility on Nablus Road in East Jerusalem. He was unhappy about the last-minute snag, and tired of the wrangling. Baker understood how hard it was for the Palestinians to navigate their own leadership in Tunis, and he put on a masterful performance that morning. He implored Husseini and Ashrawi to pull themselves together for one final push across the goal line. He was direct about the choice the Palestinians faced. The only way they could regain control over the West Bank and Gaza was through negotiations with the Israelis, and if the deck was stacked against them in procedural terms, that was still the best they could hope for. Arafat had made a major mistake taking sides with Saddam, and this was the price. The United States was not going to deliver an outcome for the Palestinians; they’d have to work hard through negotiations, but the Bush administration would ensure a fair process. As he gathered the Palestinian delegation around him at the end of the meeting, he gave them one final pep talk. “Lots of people like to say that you never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity,” Baker said. “Show them that they’re wrong.”

  By midafternoon, however, the Palestinians were still struggling. It was clear that they weren’t going to give Baker any more than seven names that day, and it was uncertain that they could agree on the remaining seven. The dead cat was not far from their doorstep.

  The mood in Baker’s suite at the King David Hotel was tense. Foreign Minister Pankin sat forlornly at one end of the living room, with little to say or do but wait for Baker to make his next move. Tired and disappointed, Baker said he was inclined to postpone the conference. Margaret Tutwiler started preparing a short statement to inform the horde of reporters gathered on the first floor of the hotel.

  Baker had always encouraged Dan, Aaron, and me to speak up, especially when we had dissenting views. The three of us quickly huddled in Baker’s cramped walk-in closet, and decided to make a case to move ahead with the invitation. With Pankin and his aides looking on passively, every bit the disoriented representatives of a fallen superpower, Dan laid out our concerns to Baker. It was true that there was no guarantee that the Palestinians would produce the required names, and there was a real risk if a premature invitation led to embarrassment. On the other hand, there was at least as big a risk that the momentum Baker had built in recent months would stall. The other parties were perfectly capable of throwing more wrenches into the works, and the whole effort could collapse. Aaron and I seconded Dan’s recommendation that we take the plunge. Baker listened carefully, and said he wanted to think about it for a few minutes. He consulted with Pankin, as much for the sake of form as anything else, and then opted to issue the invitation. The Palestinians soon got their act together and came up with the remaining names.

  The Madrid Peace Conference opened less than two weeks later, on the morning of October 30. There was no shortage of drama in the air; I still recall how angry Baker looked when Syrian foreign minister Farouk al-Sharaa, in a move that was gratuitously nasty even by the standards of the Assad regime, paused in a rebuttal to hold up a 1947 British Mandate wanted poster of Shamir, who had fought for Israel’s independence as a member of the notorious Stern Gang. Usually the picture of self-control, Baker looked at that moment as if he wanted to throw his gavel across the room at Sharaa.

  There were a number of other fits and starts over the next few days, but eventually each of the bilateral negotiations got under way, and the multilateral talks with a wider group of regional and international players started not long thereafter. Through all the ups and downs, we never lost sight of just how extraordinary it was to gather all these players and personalities and get them to agree to what each had for so long insisted was nonnegotiable.

  The election of Yitzhak Rabin and a Labor government in Israel the following June led to the secret Oslo talks between the Israelis and Palestinians, a direct outgrowth of what Baker had launched in Madrid. I suspect Baker could have brokered a Syrian-Israeli agreement, had there been a second Bush 41 term, and perhaps a permanent-status Israeli-Palestinian deal. His skills, weight within the administration, relationships with all the key players in the region, and proven ability to deliver could not be easily replicated. He seemed like the right peacemaker at the right time.

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  THE REST OF the world was hardly quiescent while the Middle East absorbed so much American diplomatic energy. With the Cold War over, and the old bipolar international order crumbling, all sorts of new centrifugal forces were at work. As we put it in a Policy Planning Staff memo to Baker in the summer of 1991, the Soviet Union’s “external empire” had disintegrated in 1989, and now its “internal empire” was beginning to as well.

  The Soviet Union proved far more brittle than many of us had assumed. On August 19, 1991, a motley group of Soviet conservatives staged a putsch against Gorbachev, putting him under house arrest in Crimea. The Soviet vice president, Gennady Yanayev, appeared on state television and with hands trembling and voice unsteady declared that a new committee of which he was the deeply unconvincing head had taken charge of the country. Boris Yeltsin, the recently elected president of the Russian Federation, courageously faced down the coup plotters in Moscow, with the backing of significant elements of the Soviet military. As the coup attempt unfolded, Baker was on vacation in Wyoming, and Dennis and his family were in New Hampshire. Back in Washington, my colleagues and I tried to understand what had happened, and where it might lead. Andrew Carpendale and John Hannah drafted two papers for Baker, the first analyzing the coup and its implications, and the second laying out a framework for dealing with the likely fragmentation of the Soviet Union.

  It was clear that Gorbachev, despite surviving the coup, was a desperately weakened leader. Yeltsin was the man of the hour. The failed putsch had stripped bare the fecklessness of the conservative opposition, opening the way for radical democratic and market reform and a range of independence movements. Our memo suggested that the only way Gorbachev could stay afloat politically was to become the champion of truly ambitious structural reform, and the only way the Soviet center could hold the union together was as the driver of meaningful political and economic change, in a much more loosely federated system. Both, we predicted, were quite unlikely.

  The more prescriptive paper laid out a set of principles to help govern American policy toward the issue of a potential breakup of the Soviet Union, similar to what we had provided Baker on German reunification in 1990. On their face, the five principles we suggested were not controversial: peaceful self-determination; respect for existing borders without unilateral modifications; respect for democracy and rule of law; respect for human rights, especially minority rights; and adherence to international law and obligations. Nevertheless, as we had found on German reunification, clear policy guidelines were critical to shape our approach and the tactical choices before us.

  Baker outlined the five principles at a White House press briefing in early September, and then traveled to Moscow to get a firsthand sense of the situation. The makeshift barricades around the Russian White House were still in place. Baker saw both Gorbachev and Yeltsin, who each professed to be optimistic about their political futures. The secretary came away skeptical that Gorbachev could survive politically, and persuaded that the challe
nge for the Bush administration was to help make the crash of the Soviet Union as bloodless as possible.

  By late December, the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. After a poignant visit with Baker in Moscow and a last telephone call as leader of the Soviet Union with President Bush, Gorbachev resigned on December 25 and his country was no more. I went again with Baker to Moscow in January for the opening of the Middle East multilateral talks. That was a surreal experience, with the Russian tricolor now flying over the Kremlin, and Yeltsin’s new, independent Russian government effectively inheriting the role of co-sponsor.

  In February, I joined Baker’s trip to a number of the other newly independent former Soviet states. We landed in a Yerevan that was almost totally dark as night fell, the Armenian power system failing and electricity shortages the norm. Baku was nearly as dismal, with rusting gas and oil pipes littering the roadside on the way in from the bedraggled airport. The Central Asian states were brighter, but just as poor. President Islam Karimov in Uzbekistan whipped out a small laminated card containing Baker’s “five principles” for dealing with the process of post-Soviet independence, which he said he always kept in his coat pocket. Baker enjoyed Karimov’s hospitality in Tashkent and especially in exotic Samarkand. On the plane afterward, however, he expressed his lack of faith in Karimov’s democratic conversion, noting that “that guy pays about as much attention to those principles as I do to Uzbek music.”

  At Baker’s urging, the Bush administration tried to be systematic about supporting the new independent states. The United States rapidly established embassies in each capital and set up substantial programs of humanitarian assistance, market economic advice, and defense conversion. It also launched the Nunn-Lugar program, to help ensure the safety and security of Soviet nuclear weapons, which were now spread at least temporarily across four sovereign states.